"Patricia A. McKillip - Song for the Basilisk" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

Chapter One

^┬╗

Within the charred, silent husk of Tormalyne Palace, ash opened eyes deep in a vast fireplace, stared back at the moon in the
shattered window. The marble walls of the chamber, once white as the moon and bright with tapestries, were smoke-blackened and
bare as bone. Beyond the walls, the city was soundless, as if even words had burned. The ash, born out of fire and left behind it,
watched the pale light glide inch by inch over the dead on the floor, reveal the glitter in an unblinking eye, a gold ring, a jewel in the
collar of what had been the dog. When moonlight reached the small burned body beside the dog, the ash in the hearth kept watch
over it with senseless, mindless intensity. But nothing moved except the moon.
Later, as quiet as the dead, the ash watched the living enter the chamber again: three men with grimy, battered faces. Except for the
dog's collar, there was nothing left for them to take. They carried fire, though there was nothing left to burn. They moved
soundlessly, as if the dead might hear. When their fire found the man with no eyes on the floor, words came out of them: sharp,
tight, jagged. The tall man with white hair and a seamed, scarred face began to weep.
The ash crawled out of the hearth.
They all wept when they saw him. Words flurried out of them, meaningless as bird cries. They touched him, raising clouds of ash,
sculpting a face, hair, hands. They made insistent, repeated noises at him that meant nothing. They argued with one another; he
gazed at the small body holding the dog on the floor and understood that he was dead. Drifting cinders of words caught fire now and
then, blazed to a brief illumination in his mind. Provinces, he understood. North. Hinterlands. Basilisk.
He saw the Basilisk's eyes then, searching for him, and he turned back into ash.
"Take him to Luly," he heard the white-haired man say clearly. "No one will expect to find him there. If they ever suspect he is still
alive."
"To Luly? That's nowhere. The end of the world."
"Then it might just be far enough from the Basilisk."
"But the bardsтАФthey're scarcely human, are they? They live on a rock in the sea, they go in and out of the hinterlands, they can turn
into sealsтАФ"
"Tales," the white-haired man said brusquely. "Go before they find us here. I'll finish this."
"You'll be killed."
"Does it matter? Tell them to call him Caladrius. After the bird whose song means death. Go."
He looked back as they led him from the room, and saw a ring of fire billow around the dead. The eyeless man turned in the flames
to look at him. A dark word flew out of his mouth, spiraled upward through the smoke on ravens' wings into the night.
He closed his own eyes, made himself as blind, as silent, so that he could enter the kingdom of the dead.
It was a long journey. The wind's voice changed, became harsher, colder. It began to smell of sea instead of light-soaked stone or
earth. The moon grew full, then slowly pared itself down until it shriveled into a ghostly boat riding above the roiling dark. Then it
fell out of the sky. They climbed into it, left land behind, and floated out to sea.
Over the shoulder of the stranger who rowed them through the waves, he watched a dark mass separate itself from the night. A
constellation of vague, flickering lights formed among the stars. The small boat veered erratically into hollows between the waves.
Wood smacked water; brine flicked across his face. He opened his mouth, tasted the odd, dank mingling of bitterness and fish. He
swallowed it, and felt a word form in his throat, the first since he had died.
"Where," he heard himself say. No one else did, it seemed for a moment. Then the man behind him, whose hands braced him against
the fits and starts of tide, loosed a long breath.
"That is Luly," he said softly, his voice very close. "The school on the rock. You'll be safe there among the bards. Just learn what
they teach you, and stay out of the hinterlands, and don't swim with the seals. If you remember your name, keep it secret, lock it
away somewhere until you are old enough to know what to do with it."
He saw fire on the rock then, and words died again. Ghosts began to form in the flames. He closed his eyes, hid himself and his
memories in the ashes of a ruined palace. He burned; he watched himself burn until he knew that he was dead, and that the boy in
the boat who saw fire on the rock had no memories, no past. The boat bumped against something. He opened his eyes, stared
unflinchingly at the windblown flames on the dock while the boy buried himself in the ashes, until he turned into ash, until the ashes
themselves disappeared.